Many modern buildings have central vacuum cleaning systems. These systems have a suction motor to create a vacuum in a series of pipes through the building. A user of the system connects a flexible hose to one of the pipes. The hose has a handle for the operator to grasp. The handle is further connected to one or more cleaning accessories.
The motor is housed in a motor housing that typically forms part of a canister. The canister also has a receptacle portion for receiving dust and other particles picked up through the cleaning accessories and transported by the vacuum through the hose and pipes.
The canister is usually placed in a central location that is easily accessible for emptying the receptacle. The motor is typically powered by line voltage that is controlled by a motor control circuit in the motor housing.
Low voltage wires typically run beside, or form part of, the pipes and hose between the canister and the handle. This permits the operator to control the motor by sending low voltage signals from the handle to the motor control circuit. In order to receive the low voltage signals, an opening is provided in the motor housing through which the low voltage wires can be connected to the motor control circuit.
Initially, the motor control circuit was mounted outside the motor housing and the low voltage wires were fed into the motor housing through the opening. In some systems, a low voltage connector was provided at the opening, the low voltage wires from the building were connected to the connector on one side, and the connector was connected by further wires to the motor control circuit.
The inventor of the current invention created a mounting post that incorporates a low voltage connector and is rigidly connected to a circuit board of the motor control circuit. The mounting post holds the circuit board and its components from undesired contact with anything else in the motor housing, including the housing itself and the motor, and in generally fixed relationship with the motor housing. This simplifies the assembly of the motor control circuit in the motor housing.
When the mounting post is the only means of mounting the motor control circuit, the control circuit may be permitted to turn about the mounting post with respect to the motor housing. It is known to inhibit substantially all movement between the circuit board and the motor housing by securing the circuit board at a second position: namely, at the circuit breaker.
It is known to insert an LED with a square configuration in a cut-out in the mounting post; so that, the LED protrudes through the opening. The selection of readily available LEDs for the square configuration is limited in power and colour. The LED provides an illuminated information indicator of proper operation of the vacuum source.